Sauper’s previous film, Darwin’s Nightmare (2004) opened with the arrival of an enormous cargo plane at an airstrip in Tanzania, ready to take in tons of processed fish to be consumed in Europe. Ten years later, We Come as Friends – the second film of his planned Africa trilogy – opens with the arrival, in South Sudan, of a tiny plane piloted by Sauper himself. While President Omar al-Bashir is being charged with genocide in Darfur, Sauper adopts the position of the court jester who speaks loudly about the sensitive things that others keep silent about – in this case, the neocolonialist exploitation of a country devastated by war and populated by American evangelists, Chinese labourers, international bureaucrats and businessmen, all ready to ‘help’ the country while pillaging on its resources. To understand Africa’s new breed of predators, Sauper looks back at the history of the European colonial dream while piecing together a collage of contemporary vignettes, each one representing a leap from one part of South Sudan to the other.

Beautifully photographed, with an acute sense of visual detail and a memorable soundtrack, this is a provocative and politically-charged incursion into the depths of neocolonialist exploitation of a resource-rich country, never losing sight of the long line of white people who also arrived “as friends” in Africa. Did you know that the moon belonged to the white man?

The documentary has been "adopted" by the Civil Society Development Foundation.